THE PILLARS OF HEALTH by William S. Sadler, M.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 3, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 14.

THE PILLARS OF HEALTH

By William S. Sadler, M.D.

By WILLIAM S. SADLER, M.D.

V. MUSHES AND LIQUID FOODS.

ONE of the great mistakes in present-day diet reform is the tendency when giving up the use of flesh foods and other questionable articles of diet, to substitute for them mushes, or pasty, and semi-liquid foods.

As mushes are prepared from cereals, and most cereals are about three-fourths starch, and since mushes are difficult to masticate, it must readily appear that the starch in all mush foods will not be properly digested, owing to the fact that it is not properly mixed with the saliva in the mouth.

Mushes, soft, doughy bread, and similar food substances are difficult of digestion in the stomach. They are formed into soggy masses, and are most difficult for the digestive juices to penetrate.

The Drier the Food

one eats, the greater quantity and better quality of the digestive juices which are poured out to act upon it. Especially is this true with reference to the saliva in mouth digestion, and it must be remembered that the mouth is an organ of digestion,—for the digestion of cooked starch.

Many of the so-called breakfast foods, which are eaten in mushy form, are far from being health foods in the true sense of the word. Mushes may be digested without much trouble by some strong stomachs, but those with deranged digestion or ordinary "stomach trouble," will do well to avoid the large use of mushy foods, and use in their place dry toast, the toasted flake foods, baked potatoes, etc.

If mushes are eaten, it is better, after they are cooked in the ordinary double boiler and cooled, to cut into thin slices, cover with bread crumbs, or something of that kind, and bake thoroly in an oven. In this way, the starch will be cooked sufficiently to enable the saliva to digest it much more easily and to digest much more of it.

Newly Baked Bread.

Too much can not be said in condemnation of the practise of eating fresh, soft, newly-baked bread. If one takes a portion of this bread beneath the crust, and rolls it between the palms of the hands, it will make a mass of india rubber consistency which will readily bound back again when thrown against the floor. This is altogether an unfit article of diet to place in a weak stomach, and is bound, sooner or later, to derange the digestion of even the strongest stomach.

Pasty foods are objectionable for the same reason. They consist largely, as a rule, of starch, are insufficiently cooked, are in a form difficult both of mastication and digestion, are unfit food for dyspeptics, and have a tendency to produce dyspeptics out of well stomachs.

The objection to mushes is largely removed if the grains are first toasted in an oven before being made into mush, as rice may be browned and then afterward boiled.

Mushes are made still more undesirable for weak stomachs by the addition of sugar and milk; as sugar is not well received by the enfeebled digestion, and the addition of milk still further favors fermentation; and still more does it liquefy and make mushy the foods to which it is added.

All foods containing starch are very easy of digestion when thoroly baked, when the starch begins to turn brown, as on the crust of well-baked bread. This brown color is due to dextrin, the transition stage in the conversion of starch into sugar. Baked potato, and other cereal products in which dry heat has had a chance to act upon the starch, are the most easily digested and nutritious of all cereal products.

In the next article we will take up the question of starch,—how it is best prepared for digestion, by both natural and artificial agencies.